


Dendrochronology

by wadapan



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers (IDW 2019), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe, Lumberjack Optimus Prime, One Shot, Original Universe, Stand Alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:42:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23027236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wadapan/pseuds/wadapan
Summary: Cybertron does not bury its dead.Deep beneath the Sea of Rust, Nautica makes a startling discovery. Atop the tallest Titan, Bumblebee sees the world through new eyes. At the core of the foundries, Orion Pax forges the future of the Transformers. Three connected conversations strongly inspired by concepts from Brian Ruckley’s ongoing series for IDW Publishing, but very much set in a continuity of their own, with no background reading required. Artwork by my pal David “Ikkad” Salamante.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 24





	Dendrochronology

“You know what I love about the sea?” asked Nautica.

A moment later, a faint burst of static came from her commlink. It sounded like a sigh. “I don’t know. You seem to love the ocean for a whole myriad of reasons, few of which make sense to me.” Though she was in her submersible mode, Nautica’s turbines remained still. She sank. “All right. What is it this time? The fish? The feeling of weightlessness? The way the corrosion eats away at your finish? It’s the fish, isn’t it—it’s usually the fish.”

Nautica couldn’t smile, but she would’ve. “I love the silence.”

“Ha, ha. Well, I’ll shut up then.”

“No, don’t,” Nautica laughed. The walls of the trench rose to meet her. “Road Rage. Roaaad Raaage. Say something.”

Another burst of static. “Something.”

“I just mean that it’s nice to sometimes be in a place where… where the only breaths you can hear are your own.”

“I don’t think you could’ve worded that in a creepier way if you’d tried,” remarked Road Rage.

“Oh no, I didn’t mean it like that,” said Nautica. She liked talking to Road Rage, but she frequently found herself phrasing things more to bait out a reaction than to get her point across. As a scientist, Nautica felt it was important to be good at communicating herself clearly—and yet. “It’s just… up there, everything’s alive. The walls are alive. You can hear it all the time, the wind in the hallways.”

“I like that. It makes me feel like I’m part of something, like I’m never alone.”

Nautica’s headlights finally fell on the seabed. She started her engines. “You should come down here sometime.”

Static, laughter. “You know I can’t do that. We’re not all airtight. I’d sink, you’d have to fish me out… it’d be no fun for anyone. Plus, I’d stink of rust for ages afterward.”

“Like me, you mean?”

“Hey, I didn’t say that.”

Nautica fell silent for a moment, collecting her thoughts. “Look, I dunno, I just feel like maybe you’d feel differently if you came down here once in a while. Like, even now, when you’re about as away from it all as you can be, you’re still with Tidal Wave.”

“He’s sulking, by the way.”

“And the sky is blue.” Tidal Wave was dependable, but dependably sullen. Part of Nautica wanted to put that down to age—he was something of a giant—but apparently that was just how he’d always been. She liked to think that they were kindred sparks of a sort, as neither one of them much liked walking, but aside from that they had little in common.

Quietly, Nautica knew that one day she would be a giant like him. A submarine so heavy that it would never again be able to surface.

“Don’t tell me you’re sulking too,” came Road Rage’s voice.

“No! No, I’m not, I’m just-” A shadow separated itself from the gloom ahead, moving into Nautica’s floodlights for just a moment before vanishing again. A round form, coated in iridescent verdigris, with spindly limbs and sharp fins.

“Was that a sharkticon?” asked Road Rage. Nautica was quietly pleased to realise that she’d been paying attention to the optical feeds. “Since when do they come down this deep?”

“They don’t, usually, they prefer the shallows,” said Nautica, making no effort to hide her excitement. “This is new.” Another sharkticon swam through the beams.

“So why are they here?”

“I don’t know. Something must have…” In the distance, Nautica saw a faint pinprick of blue light. “Something must have drawn them here. Whatever that is, it’s drawn a whole shiver of sharkticons.”

Slowing her engines, she let the current carry her closer. The sharkticons swarmed around the light, occasionally darting towards it only to veer away at the last second. They ignored Nautica entirely. Eventually, she realised what she was looking at.

“It’s a spark,” she whispered.

“That’s impossible.”

Nautica drifted until she was almost directly over it. “You’re seeing what I’m seeing, and I’m seeing a spark.”

The sharkticons circled. “Nautica, you can’t bring it with you. If you transform, they’ll be on you in moments.”

“I’m faster than them.”

“Nautica, no, you can’t do this.”

“I can’t not do this. Look how big it is already—if it doesn’t get put in a protoform soon, it’ll collapse.”

“Yeah, and when you go to grab it, and you get…” For a couple of moments, the commlink transmitted nothing but static. “Well, what’d be the point in that?”

“I can do this,” Nautica insisted. “Do you trust me?”

“I trust you, which is why I really don’t want you to die.”

“Okay, then I won’t.”

Nautica transformed.

Far, far above the surface of Cybertron, Rubble stood in the outstretched palm of Metroplex and gazed out across the landscape. Bumblebee was talking to him.

“…And you see those spires, way over there in the distance? That’s Trypticon,” said his mentor, pointing, then glancing down at him to see if he was paying attention. He made no response.

Slowly, he raised a hand out in front of his optics, pointing his digits upwards. He lined it up with the glittering hands that made up the skyline.

“The Titans have lived for Millennia, Rubble,” said Bumblebee after a moment. “So will you. You’ll grow up to be just like them.”

“They’re all so still,” Rubble spoke.

“Well, when you get to that sort of size, moving around is very tiring,” Bumblebee laughed. “To say nothing of how the poor bots living inside them feel when corridors start going topsy-turvy.”

Rubble thought about that as he surveyed the landscape. Limbs and bodies, half-submerged in thick smog. Eventually, his optics fell on a Titan which stood out from the rest. He pointed. “That one doesn’t have any lights.”

When Bumblebee saw which one he was looking at, his mentor’s face settled into a strange expression. “That’s the Necrotitan,” he said. “I’ll take you there one day… when you’re older.”

Satisfied by that, Rubble turned his attention to another, one with gargantuan treads forming what might once have been described as a torso. “They can’t transform any more,” he observed.

The expression on Bumblebee’s face intensified. “No, they can’t.”

“I don’t understand. I can’t transform yet. You can.” Again, Rubble turned his hand to face the sky. “They could, but now they can’t.”

“That’s how life works. We’re all good at different things, and we all help each other out.”

“But their faces look so…” For a moment, Rubble struggled to find the words he was looking for. He turned to Bumblebee. “They look like the face you’re doing,” he said, finally.

Bumblebee didn’t seem to know what to say to that. Rubble turned back towards the palm’s edge, and stepped closer to it. “Aww, no,” Bumblebee said. He moved in front of Rubble, taking the protoform’s hand into his and stooping until they were at optic level. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know this would upset you, I shouldn’t have brought you up here. Let’s go back inside,” he said, but Rubble shook his head.

“It’s okay. I’m not upset.”

Bumblebee squeezed Rubble’s hand. “You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay then.”

Bumblebee led Rubble over to one of Metroplex’s fingers, which towered above both of them, and they sat down with their backs to it. For a while, they simply stared up at a blue sky full of stars.

“Have you given any more thought to what you’d like to be?” asked Bumblebee eventually.

“Yes,” said Rubble. “I liked flying with Thundercracker today.”

“Oh? Really?” asked Bumblebee.

“Yes. It was scary, but I got to see a lot.”

“So you like the idea of being a jet?” Bumblebee stretched his arms out to either side and moved them, like they were wings.

For a moment, Rubble smiled, before his face fell back into its default expression. “I don’t understand what jets do.”

“Oh.” Bumblebee dropped his arms, and hesitated. “Well, Thundercracker’s a good friend of mine, I’m sure you’ll see him again soon. You should ask him yourself.”

“Okay.” Rubble fidgeted, struggling to get comfortable against the hinge at the base of Metroplex’s finger. “I don’t want to be a construction vehicle.”

“Is this because of the things Hook said?”

“It just seems like a lot of responsibility. Like once you pick that, that’s it. You spend all your time putting up buildings. You have to do it right, so the spark goes into them.” Rubble made a motion, like piling things on top of one another, before his hand settled once more into a titanic pose. He studied it intently, trying to work out where exactly he would be sitting, were he a miniscule version of himself. “Everybody wants you to do a good job.”

“I’m sure you’d do an excellent job,” smiled Bumblebee, but Rubble just shook his head. Bumblebee sighed. “I knew leaving you with Hook was a bad idea.”

“I could just be a car,” Rubble said. “Like you. Then I could do whatever I wanted.”

“You could,” said Bumblebee. “You’re special, Rubble. You can be whatever you want to be.” He peered down at the highways in the distance. From this far away, the traffic barely appeared to be moving.

“What does Nautica turn into?” asked Rubble, but Bumblebee didn’t answer. He was staring at the cars. Rubble poked his mentor impatiently. “I want to know what Nautica turns into.”

“A submarine,” said Bumblebee, finally tearing his gaze away. “She’s a submarine.”

“I don’t know what that is,” said Rubble.

Bumblebee turned away once more, and pointed at another part of the horizon—a great streak of orange trapped between the black smog and the blue sky, surrounded by countless Titans. “You see that huge flat area over there?”

Rubble nodded, but his mentor wasn’t looking. “Yes,” he said.

“That’s the Sea of Rust,” Bumblebee said. “There are special alt-modes called boats, which float on its surface. A submarine is like a boat, only it goes below the surface instead. Nautica’s interested in sea life, hence… submarine.”

“I want to meet her one day,” stated Rubble. “Maybe I want to be a submarine too.”

“She’d be very happy to hear that.”

“I was reading about petro-rabbits the other day,” said Megatron.

With a grunt, Orion Pax pushed a log into the forge. He wiped a layer of condensation from his forehead. “I don’t suppose you could lend me a hand, so long as you’re waxing poetic?”

Megatron laughed, and hefted a log of his own. “Gladly, if you’ll lend your thoughts.” He carried the log over to the edge of the smelting pool, before balancing it with one end on the ground. He took a moment to collect himself. “On the surface, they seem to be quite stupid creatures. Sparkless. Living metal living on instinct alone. And yet, when one of their number dies, they drag its body down into the part of their burrow where it once lived, and they collapse it.” He tipped the log over the edge, and it landed in the forge with a hiss.

“All right,” said Orion Pax, as they watched it slowly sink into the molten liquid. The smoke was clouding his optics. “I suppose you want me to ask why they do that.”

“Well, you see, if they leave the body where it falls, turbofoxes come and consume it. And the petro-rabbits and turbofoxes are natural enemies. If the turbofoxes are well-fed, then they’ll multiply, and more of the petro-rabbits will die.”

“Clever,” said Orion Pax. Internally, he wished his friend had picked a less morbid metaphor. Turbofoxes—and other mechanimals, like sharkticons—had a deeply unpleasant method of subsistence. “You think that’s just hard-coded behaviour, I suppose? Not something they’ve learned?”

Megatron shrugged. “That’s not what I’m getting at here. It just struck me—the petro-rabbits bury their dead.” He turned away from the pool, and gestured at the great molds which lay empty below. “We bury our living.”

The log disappeared entirely below the surface, meaning it was time to add another. “How is Rubble doing?” asked Orion Pax as he moved over to the pile.

“Very well. We’ve seen each other just once since his forging. His mentor, Bumblebee, seems to be an upstanding bot.” Turning back towards the forge, Megatron held his hand out to feel its heat. It was ravenous, insatiable, and yet so oddly comforting. He turned his hand over and, after a moment, rubbed away the layer of black soot that had collected there. “His spark has settled. You know it was touch and go at first.”

“That’s good to hear.” Orion Pax dragged a log from the pile. “From what you said, it was a miracle he’d survived for so long down there.”

“It was, and a miracle he was found.” Megatron sighed deeply. “Senator Starscream wants to keep the whole thing under wraps. If Cybertron at large finds out that sparks are appearing at the bottom of the Sea of Rust—and dying there—there’ll be outcry.

“I think we deserve to know. It’s horrific.”

“It is,” agreed Megatron. “And yet… I find the notion of a submarine generation all the more horrifying. There is no more room here, Orion. You know this to be true, better than most. We could be out there, searching for new worlds like this one—but instead we’re turning in on ourselves, scrambling to save countless sparks while consigning them all to early deaths.” For a moment, Megatron was silent. “The senate and the populace both—it’s the dissonance between their stated values and their behaviour. It’s mass delusion, it’s self-deception.” He watched his friend feed the log to the forge. “You’re quiet, today.”

“I don’t know, Megatron. We aren’t built to make these kinds of decisions.” Again, Orion Pax walked away. “If I’m being honest… you scare me sometimes, when you talk like this. It’s so… callous.”

“You’re not scared of me because I’m callous. You’re scared of me because I’m right.”

“I don’t know that you are.” With a harsh sound of metal scraping against metal, Orion Pax turned on the spot. “The Titans, our generation… I think our roots run too deep. We’re stuck here. And if we aren’t the ones to leave, then who? Who, Megatron? Yes, perhaps not your submarine generation—but maybe the one after that.” He turned away. There was only a single log left in the pile. “It’s like with petro-rabbits, only the opposite. Not death leading to more death, but life leading to more life.”

Megatron gave no response to that, instead settling into thought and descending to the base of the forge. There, he turned his attention to the control panel.

Above, Optimus added the final log. “Has the situation with Road Rage improved?” he asked as he made his way down the ramp.

“Physically, she’s made a full recovery.” Living metal flowed out into the mold, casting Megatron’s face in orange light. “If the Senate follows Starscream’s lead, however… we’re concerned that she’s going to get herself into more trouble.”

“…And Nautica?”

The flow shut off with a hiss. “She’s alive,” said Megatron, turning away. “It’s for the best that Rubble doesn’t see her, for the time being.”

The words hung in the air. Orion Pax said his goodbyes and transformed, leaving Megatron to his work.

As he wound his way down through Metroplex’s arterial catacombs, Orion Pax counted the layers. The chambers of the lower levels had not been used by anyone other than the blacksmiths for a very long time, and the thick smog of the forges choked the tunnels. Those who had once lived here had long since outgrown their accommodation. Now, they were part of the world, and their voices were naught but the low wind that whistled through its fingers.

Metroplex’s own voice had left the audible range a long time ago, but his spark practically overflowed from his body—an inescapable will which permeated every wall. How many more skyscrapers?

Orion Pax thought about the things that Megatron had said. The Necrotitan cast a long shadow. Though Megatron had never gone so far as to speak his heresy aloud, Orion Pax knew him well enough to know that, if he had his way, the sparkless city would become the raw material from which Cybertron’s future could be forged. The world would forget that death existed, at least for a little while.

One by one, Orion Pax counted the layers, until eventually he lost count. He always lost count.

Even when the smooth panels of Metroplex gave way to the rough latticework that formed Cybertron’s old surface, Orion Pax’s journey was not yet done. He followed the trail between the stumps for a very long time, until finally he came to the forest’s edge. There, at last, he transformed.

He took his axe, and got to work.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Dendrochronology_ was inspired by my friends in [the TFWiki Discord server](https://discord.gg/N99Bygq). A complete behind-the-scenes commentary explaining the writing process for this story in its entirety can be found as an appendix to [the mirrored version available on my blog](https://wadapan.wordpress.com/2020/03/03/dendrochronology/2/). If you'd like to find out about my future writing, you can follow me either there or [on twitter](https://twitter.com/TheWadapan). Thank you for reading.


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